The Incas, the Aztecs and the Arawaks. All
were centuries old Amerindian civilizations that disappeared
just a few years after the European settlement of the New World.

Many believe that the Caribs
totally disappeared, too, but Gernette Joseph, a former chief of Dominica's
Carib Indians, would like to put that myth to rest.

“The Caribs are not
extinct. On Dominica there is an existing Carib community
that is very much alive. We were able to survive the genocide
atrocity,” Joseph affirms.

Indeed, the 3,500 Caribs who
live inside Dominica's 3,700-acre Carib Reserve and
the other 2,000 Caribs who reside elsewhere on the island make up the
largest group of Caribs left anywhere in the world.

Small numbers of Caribs can
also be found in Guyana and on St. Vincent, but elsewhere in the Caribbean
they have vanished, the victims of the diseases and
brutality inflicted by early European settlers. Dominica (pronounced
“do-men-e-ka”) represents their last stronghold.

The Caribs once ranged as
far north as Puerto Rico and were fierce warriors who
resisted slavery to the death. They were such feared opponents that
on St. Vincent the cannons at one fort actually pointed inland.

To a great extent the pure
Carib bloodline has been mixed with that of runaway
slaves, but some direct descendants of the original Caribs can be found
on the Reserve today.

The eight Reserve
villages extending for nine miles along the east coast traditionally
have been among the poorest parts of the island. The Caribs began to
enjoy limited benefits of the modern world only recently.

Today, it is up to Gernette
Joseph and other Reserve leaders not only to bring their community into
a more prosperous 21st Century but also to help the
Caribs reestablish their identity.

Joseph explains, “Although
the Carib people have always been here, we have been marginalized,
on the edge, outside. We still have not been able to find our rightful
place in Dominican society.”

He blames most of the Carib's
identity problems not on centuries-old events but such modern
influences as American media and the attitudes of neighboring Afro-Dominicans.

“We've never had the chance
to be Carib, to be proud of our ancestry and our heritage,”
Joseph points out. Even in two schools on the Reserve, Carib history
is not taught as a separate subject but incorporated into other classes.